← Back to blog

Google Ads or Facebook Ads? Wrong Question (and It's Costing You)

4 min read

“Google Ads or Facebook Ads?” It comes up on almost every first call we take. And the answer is always the same: wrong question. Not because the answer is complicated, but because the two platforms are not playing the same game. Google captures demand that already exists. Meta creates demand before anyone gets around to searching. Once that clicks, “which one do I pick?” turns into “what job do I give each one?”. And that is the question that actually makes money.

Google Search runs on intent. Someone types “wedding venue near me” and you show up the exact second they are looking. You are not convincing anyone they need you. They already know. Your job is to be there with a sharper message than your competitors and a landing page that does not lose them halfway.

Facebook and Instagram run on attention. Nobody opens Instagram to look for a supplier. People stand in line, get bored, scroll. Meta sells you access to that attention, filtered by behavior and interests. You are not answering a search. You are planting an idea: this exists, it looks good, remember it.

In short: Google harvests. Meta plants. And a farm that only harvests without ever planting eventually stares at an empty field.

When Google wins

Google is the obvious choice when demand already exists and the decision is close:

  • Urgent services: plumber, car repair, lawyer. Nobody discovers on Instagram that their pipe just burst.
  • Markets with high search volume and clear intent: real estate, healthcare, actively searched B2B services.
  • Products people search for by name, comparing prices and suppliers.

The shorter and more rational the decision cycle, the more Google matters. For SudRezidential, a real estate hub we manage, Search campaigns hit a CTR above 15% and the number 1 impression share in their target areas, ahead of the country’s biggest listing portals. That is what capture looks like: when someone searches for apartments in your area, you are first. Every time.

When Meta wins

Meta is the obvious choice when demand has to be built:

  • New brands and new concepts nobody is searching for yet. You cannot capture searches that do not exist.
  • Visual, emotional decisions: events, food, fitness, fashion, travel. One good photo outsells ten keywords.
  • Long decision cycles, where the winner is whoever gets into the customer’s head months before the search happens.

Meta has one more advantage few people use properly: volume. You can reach tens of thousands of the right people on budgets where Google Search never even warms up, because you are not capped by how many searches happen each month.

Why the best accounts run both

The clearest example in our portfolio is Daimon Events, an events venue. Wedding decisions are made 12-18 months out. So Meta is working on the 2027 season right now: freshly engaged couples see the venue, save the post, show it to their parents. Meanwhile Google closes today’s active searches, with an 8-10% CTR on wedding queries and top-of-page presence nearly 70% of the time. Together, over 6,000 conversions. Neither platform would have delivered that number alone: Meta without Google would have missed the couples searching today, and Google without Meta would have been bidding on demand nobody built.

That pattern repeats in almost every industry: Meta fills the top of the funnel, Google empties the bottom.

How to split the budget: honest starting points

There is no universal percentage, but there are sane defaults:

  1. Check existing demand first. Open Keyword Planner and see how many monthly searches your service gets. High volume: start 60-70% Google. Low or zero: start 60-70% Meta.
  2. The decision cycle sets the lead. Same-day decisions: weight Google. Decisions that take months: shift budget toward Meta, earlier in the cycle.
  3. Never 100/0. Even a Search-dominated account needs an awareness layer, or you end up paying more and more for the same finite pool of demand.
  4. Rebalance quarterly, not daily. The platforms need data to learn; shuffling budgets every week resets both.

So, Google Ads or Facebook Ads? Both, with different job descriptions.

The mistake that kills accounts: judging Meta by last-click

The classic scenario: you open Analytics, see that Google brings the conversions while Meta “just spends money”, so you cut Meta. Three months later, brand searches drop, your Google cost per conversion climbs, and nobody understands why.

Here is what happened: last-click attribution hands all the credit to the final click. Someone saw your Instagram ad two months ago, remembered you, and today searched your name on Google and converted. In the report, that conversion belongs to Google. In reality, Meta did half the work and shows up nowhere.

How to judge it fairly: look at total marketing cost against total revenue (marketers call it MER), not each platform’s ROAS in isolation. Track your brand search volume over time. And if you want certainty, pause Meta in one region only and compare. The data will surprise you.

Want to know what the right budget split looks like for your business? Let’s talk - the first call is an hour of honest diagnosis, not a pitch.